The impact of cumulative trauma in infancy: Some treatment techniques

Children who have had major disruptions and traumas in early developmental phases come to the attention of child mental health specialists frequently. These children present a complex and often puzzling picture due to the early deficits. Without skilled intervention further development will be hampered. Particular focus is placed on the individuation process in the first two years of life and its impact on early development of affects and object relations. Theoretical considerations and specific intervention techniques applying this model are delineated in two case reports.     

Longitudinal Test of a Multiple Domain Model of Adolescent Condom Use

A comprehensive multiple domain model (MDM) to understand condom use in adolescents was proposed and tested using structural equation modeling of data at three time points. The proposed model integrates social psychological theory, demographic and personality factors, social environment, and situational/contextual variables. Adolescents who were sexually active at time 2 (6 months after baseline) and time 3 (1 year after time 2) and completed surveys at all three time points were included in the analyses (N = 511). An iterative process of model testing resulted in a structural equation model that provided a good fit to the data (CFI = .92, RMSEA = .04). Models comparing gender and race as moderators also were calculated and supported the generalizability of the model. Results provide support for an MDM that goes beyond traditional social psychological models for a broader understanding of condom use in adolescents. Implications for further theory testing and safer sexual interventions are discussed.     

Tensions between work and home: job quality and working conditions in the institutional contexts of Germany and Spain

Good jobs can generate capabilities that allow employees to avoid tensions between work and family/home. Following the conceptual framework of Amartya Sen, we examine how job-related demands and resources are related to the level of interference, as well as satisfaction with managing work and home in Spanish and German employees, using three different large-scale European surveys: European Quality of Life Survey and two waves of the European Social Survey. We find that long working hours systematically increase tensions between work and home, as do time pressure, job-related stress, and working hard. Job control or autonomy at work, which is hypothesized to expand individuals' capabilities and agency, tends to increase work–home interference rather than alleviate it. Family responsibilities and household demands do not seem relevant to the tensions employees experience at the work–home interface. This also holds true for women, which is a surprising result in view of the “double burden” hypothesis. Employed mothers in Germany and Spain are a select group of women, as combining employment with raising children in conservative–corporatist and conservative–familialist states may be particularly problematic. Thus while the institutional contexts of Germany and Spain curtail women's ability to reconcile employment and parenthood, the mothers (and fathers) who are employed do not experience significantly higher levels of work–family/home tensions than nonparents.     

Extended Analysis and Evidence Integration of Chloroprene as a Human Carcinogen

β-Chloroprene is used in the production of polychloroprene, a synthetic rubber. In 2010, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the Integrated Risk Information System “Toxicological Review of Chloroprene,” concluding that chloroprene was “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” This was based on findings from a 1998 National Toxicology Program (NTP) study showing multiple tumors within and across animal species; results from occupational epidemiological studies; a proposed mutagenic mode of action; and structural similarities with 1,3-butadiene and vinyl chloride. Using mouse data from the NTP study and assuming a mutagenic mode of action, EPA calculated an inhalation unit risk (IUR) for chloroprene of 5 × 10⁻⁴ per µg/m³. This is among the highest IURs for chemicals classified by IARC or EPA as known or probable human carcinogens and orders of magnitude higher than the IURs for carcinogens such as vinyl chloride, benzene, and 1,3-butadiene. Due to differences in pharmacokinetics, mice appear to be uniquely responsive to chloroprene exposure compared to other animals, including humans, which is consistent with the lack of evidence of carcinogenicity in robust occupational epidemiological studies. We evaluated and integrated all lines of evidence for chloroprene carcinogenicity to assess whether the 2010 EPA IUR could be scientifically substantiated. Due to clear interspecies differences in carcinogenic response to chloroprene, we applied a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model for chloroprene to calculate a species-specific internal dose (amount metabolized/gram of lung tissue) and derived an IUR that is over 100-fold lower than the 2010 EPA IUR. Therefore, we recommend that EPA's IUR be updated.     

Longitudinal network models and permutation-uniform Markov chains

Consider longitudinal networks whose edges turn on and off according to a discrete-time Markov chain with exponential-family transition probabilities. We characterize when their joint distributions are also exponential families with the same parameter, improving data reduction. Further we show that the permutation-uniform subclass of these chains permit interpretation as an independent, identically distributed sequence on the same state space. We then apply these ideas to temporal exponential random graph models, for which permutation uniformity is well suited, and discuss mean-parameter convergence, dyadic independence, and exchangeability. Our framework facilitates our introducing a new network model; simplifies analysis of some network and autoregressive models from the literature, including by permitting closed-form expressions for maximum likelihood estimates for some models; and facilitates applying standard tools to longitudinal-network Markov chains from either asymptotics or single-observation exponential random graph models.